Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem team
[Nottingham history]
- Brewhouse Yard
- caves
- Mortimer
- lace
- Nottingham castle
- [Robin Hood]
- Third Crusade
Robin Hood
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The statue of Robin Hood outside Nottingham Castle |
the roots of the legend
The first mention of the name of Robin Hood can be found in William
Langland's Piers Plowman, written in about 1377:
If I should dye by thys daye me lyst not to loke I can not parfitly mi pater noster as the preist it singeth But I can ryms of Robenhode & Randof erl of chester But of our lorde or our lady, I lerne nothing at all.
[If I were to die today, I should be scared to look. I don't know the Lord's Prayer properly as the priest chants it, But I do know rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolf Earl of Chester. But of our Lord or our Lady I'm in complete ignorance.]
From this allusion, it is plain that at least rhymes about Robin Hood were not part of the literature of the aristocracy but of the despised lower classes. Indeed, this class division continued for some time. For instance, the following comes from Dives and Pauper, written between 1405 and 1410 (and published in 1493):
They haue leuer go to the tauerne than to holy church Leuyr to here a songe of Robynhode, or of some rybaudry, thanne to here messe or matyns or any other goddes seruyce, or any Word of god.
[They would rather go to the tavern than to church, rather hear a song of Robin Hood or of some ribaldry, than hear mass or matins or any other divine service or any word of God.]
the ballads
The early ballads have placed the most enduring marks on the traditional
Robin Hood. Only two survive complete in manuscript: Robin Hood and the Monk (c. 1450), which specifically mentions 'mery Scherwode', and Robin Hood and the Potter (c. 1500), which refers to Wentbridge (in Barnsdale, near Pontefract
in Yorkshire) at the beginning but then focuses on Nottingham
and an unnamed forest.
However, it is the much longer -- 456 four-line stanzas -- and structurally more complex Gest of Robin Hood that is most significant. There were five different editions between 1492 and about 1560, but only fragments of three of these survive. The geographical references in it are very specific to Yorkshire -- including Barnsdale, Doncaster, St Mary's Abbey in York and Kirklees, at the nunnery of which Robin is supposed to have died -- but very general about Nottingham and its surroundings.
In the Gest, Robin is introduced as 'a gode yeman' and 'a prude [proud] outlaw'. He is deeply devout, hearing three masses a day and being specially devoted to 'Our dere Lady'. He is opposed to harming women, husbandmen, yeomen and squires, reserving his bile for bishops, archbishops, monks and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin's 'cumly kynge' is named Edward, and historians have argued that this could be Edward II (1307-27) because he undertook a visit to the north of England similar to one alluded to in the ballad.
the chronicles
The first 'factual' references to Robin Hood are found not in
the chronicles of England but in those of Scotland. Each places
the hero in a different period: Andrew of Wyntoun, writing between
1420 and 1424, says 1283-85; Walter Bower (1440s) makes it 1266;
while John Major (1521) places him in the reign of Richard I (1189-99).
Major's dating has proved to be the most popular, with virtually
all the retellers of the stories fixing on Richard Lionheart as
Robin's king.
Walter Bower, in his additions to John Fordun's Scotichronicon, has some harsh words to say about Robin:
At this time there arose from the dispossessed and raised his head that most famous murderer Robert Hood, and Little John, together with their accomplices, who the stupid populace openly celebrate wildly in comedies and tragedies and prefer to have them acted and sung above any other romances.
John Major states: 'I condemn the man's plundering, but of all robbers he was the most kind and the chief.' Major's original Latin for this phrase --'latronum omnium ... princeps' is probably the ultimate source of Robin Hood's reputation as 'prince of thieves'.
the ennobling of Robin
By the 16th century, Robin Hood had been transformed from a freeborn
yeoman into a nobleman. The antiquary John Leland, writing in
the 1530s, refers to him as a 'nobilis exlex' -- a noble outlaw. The English historian Richard Grafton, claiming
to have used 'an olde and auncient Pamphlet' as his source when
writing in 1568-69, says first that Robin was noble by birth,
but then immediately contradicts himself, stating that he earned
his status through deeds of manhood and chivalry. Robin then became
a spendthrift, got into debt and turned outlaw as a solution.
Two plays of about this time solidified Robin's noble background. Anthony Munday, in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington (both written in 1598), was the first to identify the outlaw as the Earl of Huntington. This title (with the spelling 'Huntingdon') was in fact held by David of Scotland, younger brother of William of Scotland, in the late 12th century, but the present title was only created in 1529.
There had previously been folk plays containing a yeoman character called Robin Hood, but they had necessarily been comedies. Munday, by ennobling Robin, was able to write a tragedy, with noble characters who could fulfil the rules of this genre. Maid Marian, too, changed into Matilda, daughter of Lord Fitzwater -- a fit person to be pursued by Prince John.
The oldest sources are silent as to Robin Hood's birthplace. However, the Sloane manuscript, written in about 1600, says he was born at 'Lockesley in yorkeshyre, or after other in Nottinghamsh. in ye days of Henry ye 2nd about ye yeare 1160'. The source for the Sloane manuscript appears to be the ballad Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, Valour and Marriage:
In Locksly town, in merry Nottinghamshire,
In merry sweet Locksly town,
There bold Robin Hood he was born and bred,
Bold Robin of famous renown.
However, there is no Locksley in Nottinghamshire and only a hamlet called 'Loxley' in Yorkshire, north-west of Sheffield.
the historical Robin
Since the 19th century, historians discovered a number of occurrences
of the name of Robert or Robin Hood in the archives. For instance,
L V D Owen found a 'Robert Hod, fugitive' in the records of the
York assizes of 1225-27, and since then a further eight similar
names or nicknames have been gleaned from documents dating from
1261-62 and 1296 -- most of them with criminal associations. It
appears that, at about this time, the name of Robin Hood, taken
from an earlier story or stories about the outlaw, was being applied
to others who shared some of his characteristics.
In 1852, Joseph Hunter interpreted the Gest as if it were a historical document rather than a piece of literature, and then looked in appropriate records for confirmatory names. As a result, he proposed that the historical Robin was a Robertus Hood who appears in the court rolls of the manor of Wakefield during Edward II's reign. He further assumed that this was the same man as a Robyn Hod who in 1323-24 was in service with the king as a porter of the chamber. Hunter's research was amplified in J W Walker's True History of Robin Hood (1952). However, Robert and Robin were common names in medieval England. It is unlikely that the many occurrences of them in historical documents of the time will ever do more than agree with a single detail of the literary Robin Hood's life. For instance, there is no evidence that Hunter's Robertus Hood was ever an outlaw.
Robin, if he was a single historical figure, would probably have lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. However, little can be said about the content of his biography, his parentage, place of birth or area of activity -- it is clear from the literary evidence that the stories told about Robin Hood have changed and been added to over the centuries.
If Robin Hood might have actually been a living individual, it is even more likely that exploits dealing with originally separate figures and locations came to be linked with his name. Some of the adventures attributed to Robin are known to have been attached to other historical, legendary and literary characters, such as Hereward the Wake, Fulke Fitzwarin, Eustace the Monk and William Wallace (Braveheart). This could have been the case from the very beginning: the chronicler Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil (1420-24) says that Little John and Robin Hood based their activities not only in Barnsdale but also Inglewood, which is better known as the haunt of the medieval outlaws Adam Bell, Clim of Clough and William of Cloudesly.
The content of this article was taken from Robin Hood: A hero for all times by Dr David Blamires, John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1998.
